Customer Analytics Capabilities in the Big Data Spectrum: A Systematic Approach to Achieve Sustainable Firm Performance

Introduction

“Big Data” continuously challenges firms, creating an exhilarating leading edge of prospect in the last couple of years. Contemporary firms are taking initiatives to adopt analytics for gaining a superior advantage in the rapidly changing data-rich business environment (Popovič et al., 2016; Nam et al., 2018). The worldwide market in business intelligence and analytics is estimated to be worth $200 billion by 2020 (IDC, 2016), with many industry experts predicting that the customer analytics capability of a firm would enhance the overall firm's performance in the big data environment (Germann et al., 2014). France and Ghose (2018) refer to customer analytics as to the advanced technology that able to solve the customer-centric challenges by analyzing the massive amount of marketing data. A large stream of research focuses on the benefit of customer analytics (e.g., Verhoef et al., 2010; Erevelles et al., 2015; Braun and Garriga, 2018), with relatively little or no attention been devoted to understanding the firm's capacity building of customer analytics in the data-rich environment. Therefore, this chapter seeks to answer the following question.

RQ: What are the dimensions of customer analytics capability to gain sustainable firm performance?

To answer this research question, firstly, we portray the definitional aspects of customer analytics, including discussing the difference between customer and marketing analytics. Secondly, we highlight the importance of customer analytics, and we articulate the findings of a systematic literature review and propose a set of customer analytics capability constructs.

In addressing the research question, this chapter makes two contributions to customer analytics research. Firstly, it offers a theoretical framework of capability dimensions of customer analytics. Secondly, managers can get a clear idea of the customer analytics capability that will lead to attaining sustainable firm performance in the competitive business environment. Following an extensive literature review, we propose a model of customer analytics capability that gives direction to achieve sustainable business growth. Finally, we present a brief discussion on the challenges and a path for future research in this particular area.